Talking to Ommen Chandy sir was both a task and an education.

Listening to him was even more so. Knowing him closely over three decades made me realise how unexampled a human being he was.

I first met OC sir in person his MLA hostel room. The most crowded, the most accessible room of a legislator you could find anywhere in the world.

It didn't matter to the milling crowd, whether he was present or not in the room. It was a place they could find solace or some solution to their problems.  And I can't still believe how he trusted those days students activists like us with  signed blank letterheads  to be used for collecting funds, when almost all the other  leaders looked the other way round!

I didn't know OC sir directly calls you until  once I made him wait on the phone for a good 40 minutes.

All he said when I took up the call was:  if you are not busy come over for a quick chat.

One thing that you can't separate OC sir from was the crowd. I often wondered how he managed meeting and listening to so many people, and maintained such a photographic memory throughout. People energised him, and unlike many other Politicians, crowd never tired him out.

He was a quintessential politician with his ears to the ground. "Never reply so fast. Take 30 minutes to think, that helps you control any instant anger," he once told me when asked how he never gets irritated with people.

Not many Politicians placed such faith in people. On an assignment to cover his "janasamparka' programme, I once asked why a chief minister is doing the tasks that bureaucrats are supposed to do. As always he smile, placed his right hand on my shoulder and cited three instances of how people taught him governance. That included old age pension being given to people with or without a son.

He took time off from such busy schedule to visit my personal moments of grief. OC sir, you are certainly rarest among the rare as a leader, politician and as a human being.